Book excerpt: Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, England, houses a world-famous collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century textiles. The fact that these exquisite pillow covers, wall hangings, bedcovers, carpets, and upholsteries, many decorated with superb embroidery, have survived in such good condition is little short of miraculous, and due in part to the formidable Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as Bess of Hardwick, who built the house in the 1590s. In her will, Bess instructed her heirs to 'have speciall care and regard to p'serve the same from all manner of wett, mothe and other hurte or spoyle thereof'.